


Briar's Run

by Cupilcopter



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anthropomorphic, Horror, Original work - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23210086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cupilcopter/pseuds/Cupilcopter
Summary: In the quiet little town of Briar's Run, there is something strange and dark in the woods that arrives with Autumn every year.(( No major warnings; overarching sad topics and implied death themes are prevalent but there is nothing graphic, this work is meant to be mildly unsettling so proceed at your own comfort level with spooky themes ))
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Briar's Run

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this two years ago as a challenge with a friend to write something spooky before Halloween, for the month of October- similar to NaNoWriMo, but just a creepy short story. I did write it, but only recently got brave enough to start posting on AO3 and putting my writing out into the world again. It's been a while since I had a good platform to do so, and I've been really nervous! 
> 
> Anyway! I grew up with the stories of Beatrix Potter and Brian Jacques and friends, so a bit of otherwordly horror in a cute little animal town is what came to mind. Thank you for reading, if you do! <3

No one in Briar's Run speaks of them.

It is in the greys and browns of those lonely stretches leading to winter, pierced now and then by vibrant reds and yellows, that they will surely come. Their arrival, marked by the first chill in the wind, is certain as the ice and the weeks of darkness.  
No one mentions them, but their presence is felt by us all. They are there; in the worried glance toward the window of the schoolhouse when dusk has arrived and it's wondered whether you might make it home before the sun sets.

  
They are in the hasty shuffle down the road when one is alone, in the whispers of the leaves as they are scattered along the main streets, and in the shadows which cast themselves, unwelcome, across buildings as the day ends all too quickly.  
How long they have been, no one can say. For as long as the oldest among us can remember, they have simply always been.

  
Things are different, these days, however. There was a time when that thought, that feeling in one's bones, was far more tangible, far more intimidating. To say that everything changed might be a bit too great an overstatement, but things did, in the small way that things do, change.

It all began with a young rabbit, waiting for a friend.

  
Elsie pressed her paws and snout up against a still-warm pane of the wide bakery window. Smells of cinnamon, breads and cakes lingered in the chilly air. Fog pooled on the glass in front of her until she could scarcely see inside, where the owner, Miss Maisie, lingered to double-check everything before locking up for the night.  
Miss Maisie scuttled through the kitchen, ensuring that everything had cooled to her satisfaction, that the racks and utensils had all been put back in their proper places, that the sweeping and scrubbing had indeed left the place clean enough to her liking.  
Her muzzle and great bushy tail had become snow-white in recent seasons. The tips of her whiskers were frayed and bent, and her gait had an ease and wobble to it. She shuffled through the doorway. The bell above tinkled, breaking the quiet.

  
"Miss Maisie!" Elsie cried, hopping excitedly.

  
"Hello, Elsie, darling," Miss Maisie replied with a smile. The keys rattled together as she turned the lock. "It's very cold tonight, isn't it? Why didn't you go home with the others?"

  
"I like our walks," the small rabbit offered her arm for her friend. "And besides- it's..." Her ears flicked backward against her head a little. She glanced around at the slowly emptying town square. "...It's the fourth week of Autumn today, Miss Maisie. I don't want you to go home alone."

  
At this, the fox chuckled. "Oh, dear, you don't still believe in all that, do you? You're a grown girl now. Look at how tall your ears have become. There's nothing out in those woods but bugs."

  
Elsie fiddled her paws together. "I-It's not just me that says it, Miss. The grown-ups warned me, too."

  
"When Autumn days are short and bright, don't go out in the woods at night!" They chanted in unison, Maisie's tone contrastingly flippant.

  
"Listen, young sapling, I've been around for longer than most of them. I know the stories. I grew up with them, too. I've also walked that path from here to home more years than there are rings on that tree," she pointed a worn claw to the great oak in the center of the town square, its flaming gold leaves pooling across the cobbled stones. "And I have never encountered anything afoul."

  
"Haven't you ever... heard them, Miss Maisie?" Elsie's ears pressed flat against her back.

  
The elder fox smiled. "Well, now, my hearing ain't exactly what it used to be. Can't quite pick up those low sounds anymore. Back in the day, I did hear the whistling wind and fancy it to be whispers, but you know, little Elsie, you get to be a certain age and you come to realise that almost nothing is as scary as you think."

  
Elsie tried to muster up her best smile. Maisie's sight was certainly not at its peak any longer; she had been known to use the wrong spoon or mistake flour for baking soda every now and again. But for all of that, she was as keen a fox as she might be, and Elsie felt safe in her presence, despite needing to guide her along the old wooded backroad.

Much of Briar's Run was all patched together in one big piece of land, all sprawling outward from the great oak and the square. There were, however, many houses beyond, as many creatures farmed or worked on their own land. Some simply enjoyed their privacy.  
For most of the year, this posed no trouble at all, and even in the fall, everyone made their journey home in groups, or made sure to head home before sundown. It had always been that way. Perhaps it was for no reason at all, anymore, than an old tradition- something that had seeped into the community and never quite lost its hold, as these things tend to do.

  
But then, thought Elsie, there had been a few who had gone missing. That was the way of it, she had been told, as the cautionary tales of folks who stayed out after dark and were never seen again had been imparted upon her. It had been some time since anyone had taken that chance.

  
One of the last had been during Miss Maisie's time, pawfuls of seasons ago. Maisie had only spoken of it once, and Elsie thought it dreadfully impolite to ever ask about. The story of lost young Prudence was one which had haunted Briar's Run. She and Maisie had been thick as molasses. The old folks said that ever since then, Maisie had never been quite the same.  
Even the thrill of playing hide and seek in the forest lost its appeal when the dreadful stories came to mind. Elsie and her friends never took their chances; dusk was their curfew in all things.

  
The young rabbit's eyes roved along the last of sundown's purple light, now abandoning the treetops as the woods swallowed them.

  
"What will you bake for the festival?" Elsie asked, trying very hard to think of warm cakes and biscuits instead of cool dirt and shadowy branches.

  
"Hm." Maisie pondered quietly, the soft thunk of her walking stick in the earth seeming louder than usual. "Pumpkin pie, for one- you have to have pumpkin pie! And with farmer Brimble's harvest having been what it was, I imagine we'll have plenty to go around--"

  
Her voice trailed off. The thudding of her cane stopped, as she did. Elsie, realising she had been watching the trail beneath them, looked up to follow her friend's gaze.

  
Several feet in front of them, at the roadside, something had begun to rustle the bushes. It was too dark to tell, just out of their lamplight's aura. Elsie squinted into the darkness.

  
"Miss Maisie, what is that?" She whispered. The fox stood, unmoving, her whiskers on end.

  
"Shhh, keep your voice down, young'in'," she warned gently. "I don't rightly know."

  
The rustling continued, and whatever was causing it began to move into view. It was no taller than either of them, its outline ragged and unclear, like the edges of old cheesecloth. It moved toward them, so slowly it was hard to tell at first that it was moving at all. Each step was stilted, like a match-light being breathed on.

  
An almost indiscernible murmur followed it, as if echoing from somewhere far away.

  
"Whatever you do, don't move," Maisie spoke calmly, walking stick planted firmly in the earth.

  
Elsie sucked in a sharp breath and held it.  
They waited, and watched, as the figure at last reached the ring of yellow light. What might have been a young fox kit shambled forward, swaying a little in the process. Her pinafore was a tatty mess, blackened by soil.

  
She might have been anyone, but something was terribly wrong. There was a faint clatter as she tilted her head to the side. Milky eyes stared sharply from wide, dark sockets.

  
"My goodness! Prudence, dearie, is that you?" She outstretched a paw.

  
"Miss Maisie, that's not-"

  
"M-ai-sie?" The voice that lilted from the creature's slack jaw was far away and right beside them, all at once. It was too small for her. It skipped like a stone pattering across a pond. "Pl-ea-se, c-c-ome a-nd wa-l-k w- i -th m-e."

  
"My dear, your parents have been sick to death with worry over you! Do you know how long you've been out playing? We must get you home at once!"

  
Elsie pulled at the fox's sleeve imploringly. "Miss Maisie, please, that's not Prudence, it can't be!"

  
"Hush, now, child, you're going to frighten her even more! She's been lost for some time. We need to get her home."

  
Her bristly grey paw brushed against the yellowing edge of a pale cheek.

  
"You're as cold as ice!" She exclaimed. "Here-" She swirled her shawl around the creature's hunched shoulders, guiding her along with clattering, staggering steps.

  
Elsie lingered, watching the pair amble along until they were quite a few paces ahead.

  
"Come along, Elsie!"

  
She contemplated, for the first time in her life, disobeying, and staying behind.  
In the distance, she could make out the faint snaps and rustles of more footsteps. More crackling, small voices issued from the undergrowth and the brambles along the roadside. The light of Maisie's lantern had begun to fade into the distance, and the moon could not permeate the thick trees overhead.

_Across the bridge to Briar's Run_  
_They will follow til morning sun_  
_Hold your breath and count to five_  
_To cross the bridge and stay alive_

The rhyme has embedded itself into the back of every child's mind. She could not have forgotten it even if she had wanted to, and now, the words echoing from her earliest memories served a guide. With swelling fear outweighing all else, she thought of Miss Maisie, and of the danger she would surely be in.

  
The whispers swept in from her windless surroundings. She could just make out the pinpricks of more blank, piercing white eyes emerging from the inky foliage beside her. Drawing her cloak snugly around herself, she forced herself to bound forward. Dry leaves crinkled beneath her pawfalls and dirt shot out behind her like confetti in her wake.

  
"MISS MAISIE!" She bellowed. The pin-lights were growing in number, now, just behind the thickets. "PLEASE, WAIT! MISS!"

  
"Wh-en Au-t-t-tumn d-ay-s-"

  
A disjointed chorus rose up all around her, still no louder than the distant drone of cicadas. Elsie thought of summer and clung to it. She tried to remember warm golden afternoons and swimming in the creek and blackberry pies from Miss Maisie's bakery. She tried to remember the smells. Friends' laughter. Her father's arms hugging her when she got home.

  
Then she thought of Prudence. She remembered the old photograph that Maisie had shown her. They had been two friends, small just like her. They had gone into the forest beyond the town, just like many of the folk did. Elsie remembered her father's hugs, voice, wood-burned smell, and how much Prudence must have missed those little things, too, about her parents. She blinked furiously as hot tears stung in her eyes.

  
The bridge, normally a small and innocuous thing, loomed before her. The thin creek below was now a gaping chasm. Shadows hissed and nipped at her heels as she sprang along.  
With a sharp gasp, she clamped her mouth shut. Her pawsteps echoed inside her head. Each contact with the wooden slats jarred her.

_One... two..._

Something brushed her ankle. She thought of pies cooling on the windowsill.

_Three..._

Hundreds of pale eyes rose up from the inky blackness below. They peered through the bridge's boards eagerly. She thought of fireflies beneath the stars.

_Four..._

The impact of her paws drowned out the singing from beneath. She thought about cicadas bellowing and rolling wheat fields.

_Five._

She tumbled, thorns snagging her cloak, facefirst into a clearing.  
Two voices chattered back and forth, one warm and the other discordant, as if nothing were different- as if so many years had never passed at all. It could have been any night in the fall.  
There had been a farmhouse there, once. All that stood of it now was not much to look at. The timber was sagging, dampened and neglected. Flowers blossomed all around it. The blooms formed a sort of beautiful trellis, which in the moon's light made it seem to glow.

  
Maisie stood, paws clasped to the creature's own ragged, bony claws.

  
"There. You're home now, dearie. Won't your family be so happy to see you're safe and well?"

  
"Th-a-nk y-ou, Mai-s-ie."

  
Two figures rose from the blossoms to embrace the hollow being in her ragged little pinafore. And with a sweeping gale of cold wind, what might have once been Prudence dissipated, her shadow lingering on the ground for a moment or two before it too faded. The flowers sweeping along the ground swayed, reaching toward the moon with a reddish glow.

  
Maisie smiled, picking her shawl from the ground and dusting it off. She turned to Elsie, nodding. "Come, now, dearie, let's get ourselves home."

It was not long before autumn gave way to the cold and the snow. Blankets of white tucked the forest in to deep slumber, casting a hush over all that dwelled within. Elsie never did venture out alone, but she did join Miss Maisie, and sometimes, they would find others.

These days, in Briar's Run, we do not fear the winter. We try not to fear them.  


We do not speak of them, not as they are now. We remember them as they were, and when we can, we guide them home.


End file.
